...pivoting to focus on innovation. Still blogging about copyright and occasionally on digitization.

Wednesday, April 09, 2014

#CILDC : Technologies: Marketplace Report - Marshall Breeding

Description: Libraries worldwide spend almost $2 billion/year on technology products and services and are constantly considering prudent strategic technology investments. Author of the “Automation Marketplace Industry Report” (Library Journal) since 2002, Breeding has the incredible ability to explain the current state of the industry and what we need to watch for in the future and factor into our technology decisions today.

Session Notes

Library IT industry is $1.8 billion (USD)
$790 million from companies involved in the U.S.
U.S. Revenues from libraries $495 million

Ex Libris is the largest company in the industry (number of employees). ~4000 libraries.
innovative is growing. 1600 libraries. Many have multiple facilities.
SirsiDynix - nearly 4000 libraries.

Including some companies is tricky, because of their breadth of services, e.g., OCLC. The same thing is true for EBSCO.

Size of library customers can skew revenues.
There are both big and small companies in the space.
Keystone Library Systems builds systems for spoke with sight disabilities.
Open source software factors in this. Generally those companies are small. A lot of development happens outside of those companies.

Interesting year...in terms of M&A. Lots more companies in this space, since it began in the 1960s. Recently, a smaller number of companies.

Consolidation is both good and bad. Libraries have fewer choices. You end upwind a company that you didn't choose. Libraries have issues to work through.

Large development shops can create modern automation systems. There is the potential for our systems to get lots better. We hope that software developers will the software that libraries want or need.

Personnel growth / loss among these companies. Some companies have grown since 2006. Not all are growing.

Polaris has been the same size for a long time. Hard to do better things without growing. Now acquired by Innovative.

Last year Innovative went through a transformation. Owned by private equity firms. The CEO is a professional in the tech sphere. The workforce is growing and they are going internationally. Off-shoring some software development. On March31, they acquired Polaris. Polaris was a good solid company and a model for customer support that others envied. They want to scale some Polaris systems to their own products. Polaris was already investor owned. Both companies have products that need important improvements. They are already talking about a next generation system.

SirsiDynix acquired EOS International. EOS was smaller than Polaris. Both specialize in software as a service. (SAAS).

ProQuest has also done internal consolidation. Serials Solution brand has been retired.

Follett Library Systems has consolidated around K-12 schools.

Luddea - Sydney plus, inmagic (and I lost the third)

2013 was a good sales year. New library services platforms are being adopted. This transition will take 5-10 years. Some are available, while some are still in development. The new genre of automation systems.

ILS products will continue to evolve and may be appropriate for some public libraries that are focused on physical collections.

About Me

Jill Hurst-Wahl is an associate professor of practice in the Syracuse University School of Information Studies and the director of both its library and information science & LIS with school media specialization programs. She is a member of the USNY Technology Policy and Practices Council. A former corporate librarian, Jill has always been an advocate for expanding the career opportunities for LIS graduates. Her interests include digitization, digital libraries, copyright, web x.0 and social media.